The ecclesiastical law: nosy neighbours

Not everyone accepted that the law was reasonable: here is it
pictured as an ass. Reproduced in J.R.Green, A Short
History of the English People (1900). University of
Victoria Library.

Those Elizabethans who challenged the law faced a kind of
double jeopardy: there were two legal systems, each with its
laws, officers, trials--and punishments. The ecclesiastical
courts tried such crimes as sexual offences: adultery,
fornication, bigamy, and so on.

Minor officials (beadles, promoters) spied out offences,
often at the prompting of neighbours; those who were accused
were required to collect a certain number of character
references from distinguished local people to be acquitted.
The system was ripe for abuse and petty vengeance.
(Petty--and
petting--crime*.)

The punishments often involved public humiliation: the
pillory; or standing at the church door or market in a
penitential gown for a certain number of times.

Fish on Friday?

Fasting was required by law, more to support the fisheries
than for religious reasons, but the enforcement of the law
fell under the aegis of the ecclesiastical courts.
Middleton'sA
Chaste Maid in Cheapside has a scene where two odious
"promoters" stop passers by to inspect their baskets,
confiscating those that have meat (intending to eat it
themselves, of course). They are duped by a "Country Wench,"
who gives them an unwanted child--hidden under a leg of
mutton.

Footnotes

Self-policed communities

In the absence of any police force most parish law
enforcement was handled by the community as a whole. A
certain level of petty crime seems to have been tolerated in
order to keep the peace, and even felons were usually not
indicted unless they were persistent offenders.

One persistent offender who was treated with lenience was the
labourer John Aston of Shropshire, whose endearing qualities
seems to have mitigated his offences: "a sort of silly
fellow, very idle and much given to stealing poultry and
small things."

A little too nosy?

The operation of the archdeacon's court, which met once every
three weeks, was especially dependant upon nosy neighbours.
The aim of government to enforce godliness and discipline
meant that the courts focused upon such "crimes" as poor
church attendance, sexual impropriety, drunkenness, or
otherwise morally offensive behaviour.

Some unusual situations could arise from persons spying on
each other, as in the Somerset case in which a farmer
reported a couple he observed in the act of sexual
intercourse in "a plot of grass under a hedge":

When John and Hanna had almost ended what they were about
this informant stept unto them and took John by the tail of
his shirt and demanded of them why they were so wicked as
to commit such a wicked act, to which John said that Hannah
was his wife by promise and that he did intend to marry her
the next morning at eight of the clock.
(Quoted in J.A. Sharpe's Crime in Early Modern
England 1550-1750. (1984), 86.)